Маргарет Олифант
The Last of the Mortimers
Chapter II
I GOT very little rest that night, and was up almost by break of day the next morning. In the height of my excitement and anxiety, I felt more comfort in my mind than I had done for a long time. Sitting waiting is dreadful work, but I felt myself again when there appeared anything to do. I would not allow myself to suppose that it would end in nothing. Such inquiries could not possibly be made without a motive. I was so restless that I scarcely could remain quietly at home for an hour or two after breakfast which, out of regard for appearances, I was obliged to sacrifice; but for the same reason I made up my mind not to take the carriage, but to walk to the point where the omnibus passed, and take my chance of finding a seat in it as other people did. I went out accordingly about eleven o’clock, and left a message for Sarah that I was going to make some calls, and that she was not to wait dinner for me, as I should probably lunch somewhere at a friend’s house. I saw Ellis look out after me from the hall window, with a kind of solemn grin on his face. Ellis was not to be deceived; he knew where I was going as well as I did myself.
As I had intended, I got into the omnibus when it passed, to the great amazement and dismay of both guard and driver, who knew me well enough. I thought to myself, after I was in it, that it was perhaps rather a foolish thing to do. If any talk got abroad about our family, and if the strangers, male and female, kept making strange inquiries, and I was seen driving—no, that is not the word—riding in an omnibus, what would people think but that some extraordinary downfall had happened at the Park? There were only some countrywomen in the coach, who stared at me a little, but were too busy with their own affairs to mind me much. Fortunately there was no one there from our own village. It was a very long drive to Chester, going in the omnibus; and being unaccustomed to it, and never on the outlook for jolts, I felt it a good deal, I confess, besides being just the least thing in the world in a false position. Not that I minded being seen in the omnibus, but because the guard knew me, and was troublesomely respectful, and directed the attention of the other passengers towards me. Great people, when they pretend to travel incognito, must find it a great bore, I should fancy. Of course somebody always betrays them, and it must be a great deal easier to bear what you can’t help bearing when there is no mystery about it, than when every blockhead thinks himself in your secret, and bound to keep up the joke with you.
At last we came to the street, and I got down. It was near the railway station, and so all sorts of traffic poured past the place; shabby hackney cabs, omnibuses from the Chester hotels, vans of goods, all the miscellaneous stuff that pours into railway stations. The houses were a little back from the road, to be sure, with little “front gardens,” as the people call them. I walked past three or four times before I had screwed myself up to the point of going in. The thing that dissipated all my feelings of embarrassment in a moment, and brought me back to the eagerness and excitement with which I set out from home, was the sudden appearance of Mr. Luigi’s servant, the large, fat, good-humoured Italian, whom I have before mentioned, at the door of one of the houses. The sight of him flushed me at once into determination. I turned immediately to the house where he stood, and of course it was the house, the number which Ellis had written down on his paper; there could be no doubts on the subject now.
“I wish to see your mistress,” said I, going up to the man, too breathless and eager to waste any words.
He looked at me with good-humoured scrutiny, repeating “Meestress” with a puzzled tone; at last a kind of gay, half-flattered confusion came over his good-humoured face, he put his hand on his heart, made a deprecatory, remonstrating bow, and burst into some laughing mixture of Italian and English, equally unintelligible. The fellow actually supposed I meant his sweetheart, or pretended to suppose so. I became very angry. He did not look impertinent either; but you may fancy how one would feel, to be supposed capable of such a piece of levity at such a time. And a person of my condition, too! Happily, at this moment the nurse-girl whom I had seen with my pretty young stranger suddenly made her appearance with the baby in her arms. I appealed to her, and though she stared and made answer in words not much more intelligible to me than her fellow-servant’s, she showed me upstairs. She was going out with the beautiful baby, but one way and another I was so worried and uncomfortable, and felt so strongly the existence of those plots against us which I was now going to clear up, that I took no notice of the child. I said nothing at all but that I wanted to see her mistress, and walked into the little drawing room without thinking I might be going into the young stranger’s presence, possibly into the presence of both husband and wife. However, the moment I had entered I saw her; there she was. In my heat and annoyance I went up to her instantly.
“Young lady,” said I, “you were in the neighbourhood of my house yesterday; you were in our village; I myself saw you approaching the Park. You put some very strange questions to my servant. You must know how harassed and disturbed I have been by inquiries I don’t know the meaning of. What is it all about? What claim has your husband upon the Mortimers? Who is he? What does he want with us?”
I said this without pausing to take breath, for my encounter with the servant, I confess, had irritated me. Now, when I had said my say and come to myself, I looked at her and felt a little shocked. She was certainly changed since yesterday; but before I had time even to make a mental comment on this change, I was entirely confounded by the entrance of a new and unsuspected actor on the scene; her husband! evidently her husband; but as unlike Mr. Luigi as one handsome young man could be unlike another,—a bright, open-faced unmistakable Englishman, a young soldier. The sight of him struck me aghast. What new complication was this?
“If there’s going to be any fighting, that’s my trade,” said the new-comer. “We’ll change places, Milly darling. Madam, my wife has a great many things to occupy her just now; let me answer for her, if that is possible. I think I know what she has been about.”
Saying which, he wheeled the one easy chair in the room towards me, and invited me to sit down. I sat down with the feeling of having somehow deceived myself strangely and made a huge mistake. I could not make it out. Mr. Luigi’s servant was below, and this was certainly the young woman whom I had arrested on her way to the Park, and who had asked questions of Ellis in the omnibus. But who was this handsome young soldier? What had he to do with it? A cold tremble came over me that it was what the newspapers call a mistaken identity, and that somehow I had stumbled in, after the rudest and most unauthorized fashion, into the privacy of two innocent young creatures who knew nothing about the Park.
“Pardon me if I am wrong,” I said with a gasp; “I fear I must be wrong, only let me ask one question. Did you speak to a man in the omnibus yesterday about the Mortimers of the Park? or was it not you? I am sure I shall never forgive myself if I have made such a foolish mistake.”
“But it is no mistake,” said the young wife, who had remained in the room, standing very near the half-opened door into the tiny apartment behind. Poor young soul! she was certainly changed in those twenty-four hours. I could scarcely resist an impulse that came upon me, to go up and take her in my arms, and ask the dear young creature what it was that ailed her. Depend upon it, whatever she might have asked about the Mortimers, that face meant no harm. I looked at her so closely, I was so much attracted by her, that I scarcely noticed, till she repeated it, what she said.
“It is no mistake,” she said, growing firmer; “I did ask questions. I am sure you are Miss Mortimer—we will tell you how it was. Harry, you will tell Miss Mortimer all about it. I am a little—a little stupid to-day. I’ll go and fetch the books if you will tell Miss Mortimer how it was.”
She went away quite simply and quietly. He stood looking after her with a compassionate, tender look, that went to my heart. He did not speak for a moment, and then he said, with a sigh, something that had nothing to do with my mystery. “We got marching orders for the Crimea yesterday,” said the dear simple-hearted young fellow, with the tears coming into his honest eyes. “It is very hard upon my poor Milly;” and he broke off with another sigh.
If the two had come to me together the next moment, and disclosed a plan to turn us out of our estate or pull the house down over our heads, I could have hugged them in my arms all the same. God bless the dear children! whatever they had to tell, there was but one thing in their thoughts, and that was the parting that was coming. If I had been the hardest heart in the world, that spontaneous confidence must have melted me. As it was, I could hardly help crying over them in their anguish and happiness. People are happy that have such anguishes. I could hardly help exclaiming out aloud, “I’ll take care of her!” and yet dear! to think of human short-sightedness! Had not I come all this way to find them out?
She came back again a minute after, with some old books in her arms.
“Have you told Miss Mortimer, Harry?” she asked, pausing with a little surprise to hear no conversation going on between us, and to see him leaning against the mantelshelf just as she had left him, with his hand over his eyes. Then she gave him a quick, affectionate, indignant glance—I might say petulant—and came up in her energetic way to the table, where she put down the books. “I will tell you, Miss Mortimer,” said the brave little woman. “We do not know very much ourselves, but perhaps when you hear our story you can make it plain better than we can. We found it out only by chance.”
“My dear,” said I, “do not call me Miss Mortimer; my eldest sister is Miss Mortimer. I am called Miss Milly; Millicent Mortimer is my name.”
Here the young man broke in suddenly. “Her name was Millicent Mortimer too,” he cried. “Milly!—that is her name—I beg your pardon, Miss Mortimer; I think there is no name in the world equal to it. She’s Milly, named so at her father’s desire. Tell me, is she nearly related to you?”
I was so astonished I rose up to my feet and stared at them both. To be sure, I had heard him call her Milly; but my thoughts had been so entirely drawn astray by Mr. Luigi, that I never thought of anything else. I stood perfectly thunderstruck, staring at them. “What are you telling me?” I cried. Really my mind was not in a condition to take in anything that might be said to me. She put the old books towards me one by one. I opened them, not knowing what I did. “Sarah Mortimer, the Park, 1810.” Heaven bless us! Sarah’s hand, no doubt about it; but who in the world was she?
“Child, take pity on me!” I cried; “with one thing and another I am driven out of my wits. Tell me, for heaven’s sake, who was your father? Are you that Luigi’s sister? Who are you? Where did you come from? God help us! I don’t know what to think, or where to turn. Your father, who was he? What do you know about him? Were you born in Italy too? What is the truth of this wild, dreadful mystery? Sarah may know about it perhaps, but I know nothing, nothing! If you would not have me go out of my senses, child, tell me who you are, and who your father was.”
They both gazed at me astonished. “She is Millicent Mortimer,” said her young husband, “the child of Richard Mortimer and Maria Connor; she was born in Ireland. Milly! Milly! the old lady is going to faint.”
For I sank dead down in my chair, as was natural. I put my hands over my face. I fell a-crying and sobbing in that wonderful, blessed relief. If my worst suspicions had come true, I could have stood up and faced it. But my strength went from me in this delicious, unspeakable comfort. Richard Mortimer’s children! The heirs we were looking for! Oh dear! to think I could ever be so distrustful of the good Lord! This was what all the mystery had come to! I sat crying like a fool in my chair, the two looking on at me, thinking me crazy most likely—most likely wondering, in their innocent grieved hearts, at the old woman crying for nothing. How could they tell what a mountain-load of trouble they had taken off my head?
“My dear,” cried I, when I could control myself enough, “if you are Richard Mortimer’s daughter you’re the nearest relation we have. You were to have been advertised for before now—we’ve been seeking you, or trying to seek you, everywhere. I knew there must be something made my heart warm to you so. My dear, we’re the last of the old race; there’s nobody but Richard Mortimer’s children to carry on the name. God help us! I am a silly old woman. I had taken dreadful fears into my head. Why didn’t you come and say it plain out, and turn all my anxiety and troubles into joy? Ah Milly, dear Milly Mortimer!—I could think you were my own child somehow—come and let me kiss you. I am not so weak as this usually, but I’m quite overcome to-day. Come here, child, and let me look at you. It’s pleasant to think there’s a young Mortimer in the world again.”
I was so much engaged with my own feelings, that I did not notice how much the young people were taking it. When I did come to myself a little, they were standing rather irresolute, that pretty young Milly Mortimer looking at me in a kind of longing, reluctant way, either as if she could not take me at my word, or had something on her mind. As for her husband, he was looking at me too, but with a full eager look, which I understood in a moment; his lip trembling and swelling out a little, his eyes full, his whole face telling its story. When he caught my eye he turned his look upon her, and then back to me again. Do you think I did not understand him? He said, “You will take care of my Milly?” clearer than he could have said it in a thousand words; and if my eyes were slow to answer him, you may be sure it was no fault of will or heart. Seeing she was shy to come to me, and recovering myself, I went to the new Milly and kissed her. I can’t tell what a pleasure I took in looking at her. She belonged to me—she was of our very own blood, come from the same old forefathers. I thought nothing strange that I loved her in a moment. It was not love at first sight, it was natural affection. That makes a vast difference. Even Sara Cresswell was not like a child of our own family. To think of another Milly Mortimer, pretty, and happy, and young! such a Milly as I might have been perhaps, but never was. I felt very happy in this child of my family. It was half as good as having a child of one’s own.
Then they showed me some other books with poor Richard Mortimer’s name in them, and his drawing of the Park, and Sarah getting on her horse. Poor fellow! but I rather fear he could not have been any great things of a man. I felt quite easy and light at my heart; nothing seemed to frighten me. And the two young people even, in the little excitement, forgot their own trouble, which was a comfort to me.
“But all this time, my dear,” said I, at length, “you have said nothing about your brother. How did he get to be Italian,—and what did he mean by asking about that lady—and why not come at once to the Park and say out who he was?”
“My brother?” said the young wife, faltering; and gave a wondering look at me, and then turned round, with a habit she seemed to have, to consult her husband with her eyes; “my brother? I am afraid you have not understood. Harry is–”
“I know what Harry is,” cried I; “don’t tell me about him. I mean your brother—your brother. Why, dear, dear child, don’t you understand? I met this man at the door of this very house—Mr. Luigi, you know as they call him; of course he must belong to you.”
“Indeed,” said the new Milly, with very grave, concerned looks, “I never spoke to him but once in my life; we don’t know anything about him. I never had any brother; there were none but me.”
I don’t think I said anything at all in answer. I said nothing, so far as I know, for a long time after. I sat stupified, feeling my burden all the heavier because I had deluded myself into laying it off a little. Oh me! we had found the heirs that Sarah had thought so much about; but the cloud had not dissolved in this pleasant sunshine. Out of my extraordinary sense of relief, I fell into darker despondency than ever. He was not Milly Mortimer’s brother, nor anybody belonging to her. Who could he be?
Chapter III
I DON’T know very well how I got to Mr. Cresswell’s house. I did manage to get there somehow. I went listlessly through the old fashioned streets I knew so well, and turned down upon that serious old house with its brick front and rows of windows all covered with Venetian blinds. It met the morning sun full, and that was why the blinds were down; but it had a dismal effect upon me, as anything else would have had at that moment. I know how the rooms look inside when the blinds are down; it throws a chill into one’s heart that has known them put down for sadder reasons. I went into the house in the same listless way, like a person in a dream. Somehow I could not take any comfort in those dear young creatures I had just found out. Mr. Luigi, whom I had not found out, returned upon me like a nightmare. Was there no possible way in which this mystery could be discovered? What if I sought an interview with himself and put it to him fairly to tell me who he was? I went into Bob Cresswell’s drawing-room, where the windows were open and the sunshine slanting in through the Venetian blinds. It was rather dark, but a green pleasant darkness, the wind stirring the curtains, and now and then knocking the wood of the blinds softly against the woodwork of the window; a cheerful kind of gloom. Sara’s knick-knacks lay scattered about everywhere on the tables, and there were cushions, and ottomans, and screens, and fantastic pieces of ornamental work about, enough to have persuaded a stranger that Sara was the most industrious person in the world. The creature bought them all, you know, at fancy fairs and such absurd places. I am not sure that she ever took a needle in her fingers; but she said herself she had not the slightest intention of saving her poor papa’s money; and indeed it was very true.
I was thankful to sit down by myself a little in the silence. Sara was out, it appeared, and I threw myself into an easy-chair, and actually felt the quietness and green-twilight look of the room, with just a touch of sunshine here and there upon the carpet near the windows, a comfort to me. Once again, as you may suppose, I thought it all over; but into the confused crowd of my own thoughts, where Sarah, Carson, Mr. Luigi, his fat servant, my new-found Milly Mortimer, and all her belongings, kept swaying in and out and round about each other, there came gleams of the other people suggested by this room;—Mr. Cresswell trying to make some light out of the confusion, Sara darting about, a mischievous, bewildering little sprite, and even, by some strange incoherency of my imagination, Sara’s poor pretty young mother, dead seventeen years ago, flickering about it, with her melancholy young eyes. Poor sweet lonely creature! I remember her a bride in that very room, with Bob Cresswell who might almost have been her father, very fond, but not knowing a bit what to make of her; and then lying helpless on the sofa, and then fading away out of sight, and the place that had known her knowing her no more. Ah me! I wonder whether that is not the best way of getting an end put to all one’s riddles. If Sarah and I had died girls, we should have been girls for ever,—pleasant shadows always belonging to the old house. Now it would be different, very different. When we were gone, what story might be told about us? “In their time something dreadful occurred about the succession, proving that they had never any right to the estate;” or “the great lawsuit began between the heirs of a younger branch and a supposed son of Squire Lewis.” Dear! dear! Who could this young man be? and now here was our real relation, our pretty Milly Mortimer—our true heir, if we were the true heirs of the estate. Dare I let her believe herself the heir of the Park with this mystery hanging over all our heads? Poor dear child, she was thinking more about her husband’s marching orders than if a hundred Parks had been in her power. Trouble there, trouble here; everywhere trouble of one sort or another. I declare I felt very tired of it all, sitting in that cool shady drawing-room. I could turn nowhere without finding some aggravation. This is how life serves us, though it seems such a great thing to keep in life.
“But, godmamma, how in all the world did you come here?” cried Sara Cresswell, springing upon me suddenly, before I had seen her come in, like a kitten as she was; “you who never come to Chester but in great state, to call upon people! It’s only one o’clock, and there’s no carriage about the streets, and you’ve got your old brown dress on. How did you get here?”
“Never mind, child,” said I, a little sharply; “you take away my breath. Suppose you get me some lunch, and don’t ask any questions. I am going to stay all day, perhaps all night,” I said with a little desperation; “perhaps it’s the best thing I could do.”
“Godmamma, something has happened!” cried Sara; and she came and knelt down on the stool at my feet, looking up in my face, with cheeks all crimsoned over, and eyes sparkling brighter than I had ever seen them. It was not anxiety but positive expectation that flushed the child’s face. I could not help thrusting her away from me with my hand, in the fulness of my heart.
“Child!” cried I, “you are glad! you think something has happened to us, and it flushes you with pleasure. I did not expect as much from you!”
Sara stumbled up to her feet, confused and affronted. She stood a moment irresolute, not sure, apparently, how to take it, or whether to show me to the full extent how angry and annoyed she was. However, I suppose she remembered that we were in her father’s house, and that I was her guest after a fashion; for she stammered some kind of apology. “You took me into your confidence before, and naturally I wanted to know,” cried the child, with half-subdued fury. She had never been taught how to manage her temper, and she could not do it when she tried.
“You,” said I, “we are your godmothers, Sara, and have loved you all your life; but you want to know, just as if it were a story in a novel—though, for all you can tell, it may be something that involves our fortune, or our good name, or our life.”
Now this was very foolish of me, and I confess it. It was not anger at Sara that made me say it—nothing of the sort. But I had come through a good deal, and my mind was so full that I could bear no more. It burst from me like something I could not retain, and after that I am ashamed to confess, I cried. It was merely the excitement and agitation of the day, so unusual to me, and coming after such a long strain of silent excitement as I had already come through.
Sara stood before me confounded. She was quite unprepared for anything of this kind. She kept standing by me in a bewildered way, too much puzzled to say anything. At length she knelt down on the footstool and pressed my hand upon her little soft mouth. “Something dreadful has happened, godmamma?” said Sara, looking up at me wistfully. The poor child was really alarmed and full of anxiety now.
“No, no,” said I, “nothing has happened at all. I am only too nervous and alarmed and unhappy to bear speaking to. I am not unhappy either. Sara, child, can’t you leave me by myself a little and order luncheon? I’ll tell you all about it then.”
Sara got up immediately to do what I told her; but before she left me stole her arm round my neck and kissed me. “I have got a secret to tell you, godmamma; you’ll be so glad when you know,” whispered the creature in my ear. Glad! I suppose it would be some of her love affairs,—some deluded young man she was going to marry, perhaps. Well! so I might have been glad, in a manner, if it were a suitable match, and she had taken any other time to tell me; but you may fancy how much happiness I had to spare for anybody now.
It may be imagined that my appetite was not very great in spite of my anxiety about luncheon, but I certainly was glad to have a glass of Mr. Cresswell’s nice Madeira after all my fatigue and exhaustion. Sara and I sat opposite to each other in the dining-room, where the blinds were down also, without saying much for some time. She was watching me I could see. There she sat very demure and a little anxious, in her velvet jacket, shaking her short curls, now and then, with an impatient kind of motion. I was glad to see that kitten have so much perception of the rights of hospitality; for she allowed me to take my time, and did not torture me with questions, so that I really got the good of this little interval, and was refreshed.
“I ought to be very happy instead of being so nervous and uncomfortable,” cried I at last; “for only fancy, my dear child, who I have found. Do you remember when you were at the Park hearing your godmamma Sarah speak of an heir whom she wanted your papa to advertise for? Well, what do you think, Sara? I have actually found her! for she is not an heir but an heiress. What your godmamma Sarah will say when she hears it, I can’t think; for she has never been advertised for, you know. She has turned up ‘quite promiscuous,’ as Ellis says.”
“Oh!—so you know!” said Sara, in quite a disappointed tone; “and I thought I had such a secret for you. Well, of course, since you do know, it doesn’t matter; they’re coming here to-night.”
“My dear, I know they are coming here to-night. They told me so; and your papa is to go over the whole, and make it all out how it is. Ah, dear me!” said I with a sigh, “if that were but all!”
“Dear godmamma,” said Sara in her coaxing way, “are you not glad? I thought you would certainly be glad to find another Milly Mortimer; but you’ve got something on your mind.”
“Ah, yes, I have something on my mind,” said I. “Sara, child, I don’t know what to do with myself. I must see this Mr. Luigi before I go home.”
“You can’t, godmamma; he is not in Chester,” cried Sara, with a sudden blush. “As soon as he found out—the very next morning at least—he went away to fetch some things he had left behind.”
“Found out what?”
Sara put her hands together with a childish appealing motion. “Indeed, I do not know—indeed, dear godmamma, I do not know. If you think it wrong of me to have spoken to him, I am very sorry, but I can’t help it. I met him at Mrs. Langham’s, you know,—and he saw Sarah Mortimer written in her book. And the next morning he met me,—I mean I met him—we happened to meet in the street—and he told me he had found the clue he wanted, and was going to fetch some things he had put for safety in London—and I know he has not come back.”
“How do you know he has not come back?” said I.
Sara thought I was thinking of her, and the child blushed and looked uneasy; I observed as much, but I did not till long afterwards connect it with Mr. Luigi. I was too impatient to know about himself.
“Because I should have seen him,” said Sara, faltering. It did not come into my head to inquire why she was so sure she would have seen him. My thoughts were occupied about my own business. I groaned in my heart over her words. Not yet was I to discover this mystery. Not yet was I to clear my mind of the burden which surely, surely, I could not long go on bearing. It must come to an end, or me.
